March 4, 2025
On Saturday, March 1, 2024, the National Agency for Science and Engineering Infrastructure, the Renewed Hope Infrastructure Development Fund, and the private sector launched the Irrigate Nigeria Project to provide sustainable irrigation systems for the nation’s agricultural sector.
The pilot phase of the project is taking place on 10,000 hectares of rice farms in the town of Gamawa in Bauchi State near the border of Niger.
As mentioned by the Daily Post Nigeria, Irrigate Nigeria is part of President Bola Ahmed Tinubu’s Renewed Hope Agenda, which aims to empower youths and women by helping them achieve three farming cycles annually through mechanization instead of one cycle, based solely on rainfall.
The four pillars of the project are the deployment of centralized irrigation systems used by neighboring farming communities, the provision of inputs, access to enhanced fertilizer, and technical support for farmers.
According to Science Nigeria, the initiative will expand to other states to empower millions of Nigerian farmers.
As mentioned by Nairametrics, expanding Nigeria’s irrigation system is expected to increase crop yields by 50% while broadening the nation’s agricultural sector, which provides over 35% of Nigerian employment.
Irrigate Nigeria should also help the country solve its food shortage and food inflation problem.
According to This Day, Irrigate Nigeria will be run by the private sector, which will improve efficiency and provide financing.
The program will allow farmers to pay their financiers with portions of their harvests that will be placed in a strategic food reserve to be sold domestically and abroad.
Nigeria currently imports over $10 billion of food annually.
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